Successful Blog

Net Neutrality 6-27-2006

by

Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

How can we keep the Bells from committing net-neutricide?

How do you detect when the Bells are committing neutricide? It can’t be as simple as measuring throughput. There’s a host in China that I can’t reach from my ISP in London because of an incorrectly configured router at Sprint. That’s stupid and painful, but it’s not the same thing as anti-neutral. Distinguishing stupidity from malice from outside is going to be very hard.

One thing we don’t want is something like the SEC’s anti-insider-trading rules. Network neutrality rules won’t have much practical use if the only way to get them enforced is to convince a bureaucrat at the FCC to raid AT&T’s sales office, seize its files, and investigate your suspicions of wrongdoing. . .

Hyperbolic neutrality nonsense

Netflix founder Reed Hastings wants to move his company’s video distribution system off the postal system and onto the Internet, where it would become a major consumer of bandwidth. He’s worried about traffic-sensitive pricing, so he invokes the all-singing, all-dancing Wonder Principle, “net neutrality”, on the opinion pages of America’s most credulous newspaper:

Today, forces are at work to stake out future control of Web site traffic and eliminate the Internet’s longstanding openness. . . .

. . . While I can sympathize with Mr. Hastings’ desire to have Fedex service for the price of a first class stamp, I’d rather not be the one to pay the difference.

EXCLUSIVE: AT&T CEO’s political donations to net neutrality opponents

As AT&T continues its battles with net neutrality proponents on Capitol Hill this week, I thought it would be interesting to see where AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre has been spending his own money this campaign and election cycle.

I went to Opensecrets.org, and checked under “Whitacre.” . . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Cat Wentworth, Designers who Blog & the Header

by

Cat Wentworth

Late on Friday, I got an email from the designer-publisher-superwoman, Cat Wentworth, who owns Designers who Blog. You may know her from the Successful Blog community. She’s commented here often with her insights. She pointed us to the Great Find article on C.R.A.P. design by Mike Rundle, and she stops by for Tuesday Open Mike Night whenever she has a chance.

Designers who Blog is a showcase for creative bloggers. Cat is great at making sure the world knows about talent in her own creative and wonderful way. In this particular email, Cat said she was going to feature Successful Blog in her showcase. How cool of a turnabout is that?

What happened next was too exciting. People who know how laid back I can be would have paid money to see how I reacted. I’m not kidding, really. My IT husband was laughing through the whole thing. [Read more…]

Net Neutrality 6-26-2006

by

Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

A Simple Net Neutrality Message: It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

I’m very much an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ guy.

The Web ain’t broke, not one bit. In fact, it’s thriving, growing by leaps and bounds, producing more cool innovations in a day than you could try out in a year. And the Net has been neutral since its beginnings. . . .

Are You Among The Seven Million?

“Privacy advocates slammed AT&T on Thursday for declaring that it owned its Internet and video customers’ account information and could hand the data over to law enforcement if needed.”

Owned!!! That’s right – owned!!!

Think about this – read this – see this – hear this – know this;

“In the policy update, which applied to AT&T’s more than 7 million Internet and video customers, the company said it could collect usage information from subscribers, including the Web pages they view, the programs they record, and the games they play.”

After they’ve collected that information, they OWN it! They own your information, about you!

And they do wonderful things with the information they own about you;

They Share It

On Monopoly (and a little bit of net neutrality)

The irony is that the people arguing that, say, the government should breakup monopolies in the name of innovation tend to be plagued by a lack of imagination. They couldn’t imagine that anything beyond the desktop OS would matter in computing. If they had seen a future whereby the web might supersede the desktop, they might not have worried. On a personal note, I wouldn’t argue that I have any foresight whatsoever, but hindsight works just fine. Simply looking at history should be enough to realize that one company can’t dominate and seek rents on a market for too long. Simply the act of exploiting a dominant position prompts more effort and energy in the direction of beating it.

And on that note, let me segue into the current arguments about net neutrality, and why I suspect that legislating the principle would be a bad idea. If the telcos really do try to stifle what happens on the internet, there will be a lot of effort put forth to try and circumvent their grip. . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Introducing Manage to Change

by

SOB Hall of Famer: Manage to Change by Ann Michael

“Manage to Change” provides a forum to discuss how change impacts people and businesses. By sharing observations and asking questions, we try to develop strategies for anticipating change, viewing it positively, adapting, and even changing the rules of the game as often as possible.

To some degree the focus is on information management: What will happen in the world of content creation, marketing, distribution/delivery, and the
business models of media and publishing, as technology advances and consumer demands change?

Notes from Liz: Ann Michael thinks of change in context. Change to her is part of a process.Ann approaches her life and her work with determination, energy, and constant attention to what might move things forward in a positive, supportive fashion. Read her comments, on this blog or the many blogs that Ann visits, and you’ll know that Ann likes to laugh and likes to study business — how it works and how people think. She is an intringuing and powerful combination of likeability, laughter, and downright competence. Read her blog and you will see what I mean.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Has your SOB Blog Been Introduced to US?
Blog Promotion: May I Introduce You?

Net Neutrality 6-25-2006

by

Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

Amanda does it again

AMANDA COGDON AND ROCKETBOOM ON NET NEUTRALITY. [via Chris J. Davis]

Does the Internet really need the US?

So anyhow, for my theory de jour (nope sorry, not French) I reckon if the deep-corrupt US politicians and marketeers want to take their county’s technology back to the dark ages (as they appear to have done with foreign policy), and the people in that country are fool enough to swallow that line, then I say f**k ’em [my edit]. It’ll be a shame to lose such an innovative population from a unified, global, open net, but if that’s the way it’s going – friends, check your passports are up to date. . . .

Even within the mindset of US capitalism, the idea is broken. Other nations (and corporates) with a clue will thrive in an environment where Americans have lost net neutrality. Yep, sit back and use your PC as a glorified DVD player, your mobile for ordering a burger, while your economy gets left in the slow lane.

The world has a huge amount to be grateful for to American people for the work behind the Internet, behind the Web. But this is the human race we’re talking about, if some nation decides to go tinpot for dollars then it isn’t any one else’s responsibility. The Internet is bigger than the United States. The Internet was designed (in the US) to work around breakage, no matter where it happens.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 6-24-2006

by

Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

Wresting Control from the US

On other internet-related news, there continues to be rumblings that ICANN, which currently is the US-controlled body that governs the internet, may have to cede some or even all of its power to a UN body. The UN Working Group on Internet Governance has laid out four options for the future governance of the internet:

Option One – create a UN body known as the Global Internet Council that draws its members from governments and “other stakeholders” and takes over the US oversight role of Icann.

Option Two – no changes apart from strengthening Icann’s Governmental Advisory Committee to become a forum for official debate on net issues.

Option Three – relegate Icann to a narrow technical role and set up an International Internet Council that sits outside the UN. US loses oversight of Icann.

Option Four – create three new bodies. One to take over from Icann and look after the net’s addressing system. One to be a debating chamber for governments, businesses and the public; and one to co-ordinate work on “internet-related public policy issues”.

[supernova] Michael Copps

Michael Copps of the FCC has two messages: All is not well in Washington, and we “need to do a lot more about that.”

Access to the Internet could reasonably be considered a civil right, he says. The Net is crucial, yet the US is falling in terms of per capita access to broadband. And the FCC counts 200kb as broadband. And if there’s a single person with broadband in a zip code, the FCC counts the entire zip code as having access to broadband. He says we’re the only industrialized country that has no national strategy for getting the country connected. He suggests that other countries have better competition policies or incentives.

“Let’s get the facts, do the research, do the analysis, consider our options” and implement.

“Decentralized end user control is increasingly at risk.” “The concentrated providers have the ability to build networks with traffic policies that restrict how you and I use the Internet.” Although they say they’re not going to do that, but history shows that concerns with the ability and the incentive frequently give it a try, he says.

Metro-Scale Wi-Fi as Ultimate Backup

If you’re a business owner—home, small, medium, or large—$20 per month as a backup policy against a broadband outage or a line cut that would take down a wired service is a pretty low price to pay just to have it immediately available as needed.

Remember that many of the RFPs issued by municipalities require net neutrality to be enshrined in proposals. Which, in most cases I’ve read, includes an explicit mention that any device may be attached to the network and used for any legal purpose. Thus sharing a single network connection when a business’s wired line goes down is perfectly legitimate.

The municipal architecture for most cities is either switched or mesh throughout, and it’s only dependent on a supply of power—I don’t know city-by-city requirements for backup power on mesh nodes, and I think there’s essentially no requirement for this. In Tempe, I believe six fiber drops serve the MobilePro network, with at least one dedicated to city purposes. Because they’re switched, even multiple fiber cuts wouldn’t damage the network. Likewise, a network like Philadelphia’s, according to EarthLink’s description, will be almost entirely wireless until you hit some fiber points of presence.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE